


no one even cared until the night she went walking alone, and never came home

by nosecoffee



Category: Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Genre: F/F, Fae AU, Gender Changes, Modern AU, Uni AU, everyones girls, some non-descriptive smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-20
Updated: 2017-02-20
Packaged: 2018-09-25 22:04:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9848027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nosecoffee/pseuds/nosecoffee
Summary: "Never bet anything you're not willing to pay." Jack whispers, her breath tickling Ralph's hair against her ear. "You might end up with serious debt."Jack's friends roar with laughter at this proclamation.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title from 'Hazard' by Richard Marx.
> 
> Hope you enjoy

The minute Ralph steps on campus she gets a chill down her spine.

A red-head in a tank top brushes by, stuffing a flyer against Ralph's chest.

She stumbles and scrunches it in her hand in an effort to keep hold of it.

It's a flyer for a welcome bonfire.

~

Ralph gets to her room, on campus.

Her roommate refuses to divulge her actual name, instead asking Ralph to call her 'Piggy'.

When Ralph asks why, Piggy shrugs and says something about body positivity and Pitch Perfect and protection.

Ralph doesn't care much. Piggy can do what she wants.

~

The first night, Ralph takes out her ear-buds and starts getting dressed.

Piggy peers at her from behind her horn-rimmed glasses. "Where are you going?"

Ralph pulls on her jacket, and pulls her hair back into a braid, not fussed at its messiness. "They're having a bonfire on the football field. I figured I'd make friends."

Piggy frowns and gets up, beginning to dress.

"You coming, then?"

Piggy nods. "You scare 'em off if you're in groups. They're less likely to steal you."

Ralph wrinkles her nose. "Steal me? What are you taking about?"

Piggy sniffs and pushes her glasses up her nose. "The Fair Folk."

"Are you sure you haven't had pre-party uppers?"

Piggy smacks Ralph's arm and tugs on her sleeve, stuffing her jangling keys in her pocket. "Of course not." Her roommate snorts and pulls Ralph out into the corridor. "Did you not know?"

"I certainly don't know what you're getting at." Ralph sighs as Piggy releases her sleeve, following her down the stairs.

"The Fair Folk that live on campus. Tell me you know _something_ about Faeries."

~

"You don't eat a single lick of their food. Don't make trades with 'em. Never let 'em charm you. Don't give 'em your real name. Never owe 'em anything. Don't go anywhere alone with 'em. Stay away from the theatre and the washroom and the north bleachers. They have courts everywhere. And, this ones most important, _never_ kiss 'em."

~

Piggy's rules still fresh in Ralph's mind, she almost wants to leave the arms of the red-headed girl currently nibbling at her lips, fingers slipped through the fly in her jeans, pushing aside the fabric of her knickers.

But, then again, she's busy.

She hasn't offered a name - Ralph had honestly been too drunk to ask, vaguely recognising her as the flyer-girl from earlier that day, and abandoning Piggy to the mercy of the partying crowd.

Ralph moans and clutches flyer-girl's biceps, legs shaking.

Flyer-girl huffs at the lack of mobility the jeans offer and tug them down with her free hand, before dropping to her knees and doing something with her mouth that haunts Ralph.

~

She goes home on wobbly legs, a hickey and a blueberry her only souvenirs.

(Ralph chucks the blueberry in her wastebasket, because it looks mushy and who likes mushy blueberries?)

~

Piggy has a study-buddy who's name is Simone but makes everyone pronounce it like 'Simon'.

She's shorter than Piggy with smooth dark skin, brown hair, and hazel eyes, and she talks like she grew up on the bayou when she's drunk or tired.

Ralph studies with them sometimes.

Eats her cashews and frets at her syllabus until it makes sense to her tired mind.

She's pulling through.

~

"Have you slept at all in the past 72 hours?" Simone asks her once when Ralph's pulling a study marathon - having completed three essays with one to go.

"That's a good question." Ralph responds, not looking up from her laptop.

There's silence for a moment, which is odd (Piggy isn't a quiet person; she likes to fill the air with senseless nothing's - even when she sleeps she murmurs and snores) and Ralph turns to peer at Simone from behind glazed eyes.

Simone peers back, a strange look on her face.

The one Piggy calls 'Mystic Face'.

"Are you being careful?" Simone asks slowly and Ralph nods just as slowly back, not quite sure what Simone wants her to be careful of.

She gets up and shuts Ralph's laptop, and the serene look on Simone's face compels her not to complain.

"Take a shower. Go and get some food. Rest. You need it." She tells Ralph.

Ralph looks back down at the laptop and her notes and her rubbish. "But...this essay's due tomorrow..."

"Perfection comes at a price." Simone warns.

"I'll pay it." Ralph replies, and then frowns, not sure what it entails.

Simone shakes her head, pulling Ralph up off the bed. "That's the thing about debts. They always come to call at the worst time.”

She taps Ralph's nose with a calloused fingertip and leaves her dazed and tired.

~

(Ralph vomits in the shower and curls up in bed that night with a pink nose. Just her luck to catch a cold.)

(Of course, she does get an extension on that essay.)

~

It isn't long after that that Simone vanishes without a trace.

Police are swarming her dorm, looking for clues.

By that point she's been missing five days.

Won't pick up her phone, no note, not clothes missing, no bag gone.

It's like she went out for dinner and never came back.

Just vanished into thin air.

The police question Ralph and Piggy (who has to tell them her real name) but they're not much help.

"She wasn't acting much different when we last saw her." Piggy says.

"And when was that?"

"Five days ago, dinner. She was talking to us, and then her phone rang, and she ducked out." Ralph frowns at the memory, fuzzy with sleep and, of course, Ralph had been distracted by s glimpse of red hair in the corner of her eyes. "When she didn't come back we just assumed she went home."

"Thank you." The policeman says and they're free to go.

~

Ralph starts to notice things that are a little weird about Piggy.

She takes a lot of iron tablets, offering no explanation as to why, but offering some to Ralph. She puts extra flavouring in her ramen, winks when Ralph sends her questioning looks. She has weird perfumes and soaps and moisturisers and deodorants, in flavours and scents Ralph's never heard of before.

Ralph learns to live with it.

~

Simone's sudden disappearance fades to the back of Ralph's mind as Christmas comes up, along with a wave of tests and assignments that won't seem to work for her.

She's stressing.

And she wonders how Piggy's staying on top of things.

"The library, section G, nonfiction. Time passes slower there. Go ahead." Piggy says, with a wink.

~  
  
She's right.

~

Ralph doesn't fail a single test. Ralph gets top marks on her assignments.

Piggy takes her hands with a smile, and burns them with silver nitrate.

~

Piggy's a chemistry major, but she's suspended for taking dangerous substances outside the lab. Ralph's hands heal, but there's silver-tinted burn scars all over them.

"Why?" She'd asked after Piggy drove her to the emergency room.

"It gives you the sight. It's a gift. You'll know the Folk when you see 'em."

It's not the kind of gift Ralph wants.

It's not a gift to wince when she sees her hands.

~

"There's some nice support groups around here." Ralph says, and watches Piggy quirk an eyebrow. "I only bring it up because we're supposed to be traumatised by the disappearance of our friend."

"They're not good. Don't bother."  
Ralph narrows her eyes at her roommate. Piggy has a way of conveying fear that you can't pick up at first. She acts like she couldn't care less, when in fact she's terrified.

"What's wrong with the support groups?" Ralph questions.

Piggy watches her over the edge of her glasses. "They're fairy circles, dipshit. Geez."

~

Ralph sees Flyer Girl by the north bleachers, and pretends to listen to music as she wanders closer.

Flyer girl and a girl with dark - almost black - eyes are squirting water from water bottles at each other, laughing like mad, before giving each other noogies and disappearing under the seats.

Ralph waits a few moments and peers under them.

Nobody's there.

~

A blueberry falls out of her flannel pocket when she bends down to pick up a wrapper to put in the bin.

Ralph ignores it.

~

Piggy gives Ralph a mood ring for her birthday, a gag gift, Ralph thinks at first, but then Piggy tells her that if she looks at someone through it and they're a part of the Folk, she'll see their true form.

Ralph slips it onto her finger.

~

They end up at a party, and the moment Ralph sees Flyer Girl, she slips the mood ring up off and holds it level to her eye.

She's not sure what she's expecting to see.

Piggy told her to never get caught doing it.

The red-headed girl notices, and invites Ralph over for a game of beer pong.

They start gambling over it.

The red-headed girl - Jack - bets a pretty golden necklace. Ralph bets her mood ring. Jack grins like everything's falling into place.

Ralph loses the round and Jack slides the ring off her finger in a way that shouldn't feel so intimate that it sends a shiver down Ralph's spine.

"Never bet anything you're not willing to pay." Jack whispers, her breath tickling Ralph's hair against her ear. "You might end up with serious debt."

Jack's friends roar with laughter at this proclamation.

~

Jacks friends call her Merridew, which Ralph assumes is her surname.

It never occurs to her that perhaps _Jack_ isn't her real name.

~

Ralph thinks perhaps she's won the favour of this red-headed faerie.

She doesn't notice that Piggy sees her mood ring gone.

~

Piggy warns her to step over the trails and thick lines of water on paths.

Warns her not to step in them, warns her not to follow them.

Ralph's chest aches in longing.

~

Jack sees the burns on her hands. Sneers at them.

 _Damn chemistry majors,_ she mutters, kissing the burns, _ruining perfectly nice hands._

_Scarring perfectly nice girls._

~

Jack seems content in being aware that Ralph knows. And flaunting it.

"You know we like musicians best." She says one day, Ralph curled up in her lap while Jack leans against a shelf. They're in G section, nonfiction. "We steal them the most."

Ralph, who had been pleasantly nuzzling into Jack's neck, bites playfully at her pale skin. "Is this you saying that I'm not your type? 'Cause I can vaguely play the recorder."

Jack laughs, thank god. "You're an unusual addition, for sure." Ralph attempts not to overthink that statement. "But I brought it up only for fun."

Ralph hums, "Go on, then."

"We steal them the most, but we also bring them back the most. They're most likely to keep their mouths shut about what they've seen." Jack continues, rubs her slender fingers into the small of Ralph's back. "English majors are dope contenders too. They're vain and if you compliment them and their work enough, they'll be out of their clothes in a flash. _So_ easy to please, those ones."

Ralph noses the curve of Jack's skull as she preaches the virtues of newer students, the hipster ones who are trying so hard they choke on their cigarette smoke.

When they emerge it's only been an hour in real time, but it's been a day in G section, nonfiction.

~

Ralph finds blueberries everywhere, but she never eats them.

~

Ralph thinks perhaps she's pleased the Folk enough that they're going to grant her a favour.

Ralph gets to eat and drink their food and kiss every faerie at the gathering that night, no consequences.

Every faerie adores, dotes on her, kisses her and touches her, apart from Jack's dark friend who leaves early.

Jack dances with her in a way that Ralph didn't know you could dance.

There's fire and flowers, and at one point, when she's been dancing so long, she feels like her feet are on fire.

That night she sees the true beauty of the Fair Folk, their monarch butterfly wings stretched to full capacity in the crescent moonlight.

Jack's are red and black, like a sunset, like a murder.

Ralph eats all the blueberries Jack gives her.

  
~

She wakes the next morning, a dull ache in her head, rosemary clouding her nose, familiar hazel eyes in her mind.

Piggy's sitting at the end of her bed.

"I'm losing you, aren't I?" Her roommate asks, and Ralph's throat is so parched she can't say a word in response.

"I tried so hard, but the moment Simone succumbed I knew you were done for, too."

Piggy leaves the room and everything begins to make sense.

~

The silver nitrate.

Simone's personality, along with her disappearance.

The soaps and perfumes.

The iron tablets.

The flavouring.

All this time, Piggy was trying to protect her.

Ralph had been drowning for far too long to be saved now.

~

They're on the floor of the greenhouse, and there's a blueberry placed on her pursed lips.

It's almost like a game, except treacherous if she loses.

If she so much as cracks her mouth open, she's cursed to an eternity in Faerie.

Jack's finishing her off with her mouth, on the floor of the greenhouse, the one with the time that's a little quicker than G section, nonfiction, but not as quick as real time.

Ralph mustn't.

But she wants to.

Wants to leave it behind.

Wants to chew it, grind it between her teeth and taste it sweet and seducing on her tongue, only half as satisfying as Jack's smile.

She arches off the cold concrete floor, the blueberry falling off her lips, not a breathe touching it.

So, Ralph wins again.

Jack produces another and they start over.

Ralph wonders if the game ends when Ralph gives up.

~

Roger, Jack's dark-haired friend, is kissing someone short and dark-skinned by the north bleachers, as Jack leads her towards them.

"Rog! Si! You guys met Ralph?"

Simone unentangles herself from Roger and smiles wickedly at Ralph with her teeth which are sharper, and ears pointier.

Ralph would weep if she didn't feel so shocked.

She feels that she should tell Piggy.

Thinks perhaps it'd break her heart to know that Simone had left them on purpose.

Ralph settles for fainting.

~

"What if I'm ready?"

They stop on the path, a trail of water by Jack's feet.

Jack holds up a blueberry in between her fingertips. It's a small one, one she could probably inhale of she wasn't thinking to hard about it. "Then it's easy."

"I can never come back?" Ralph asks, carefully taking the round fruit in her palm.

"Yes. You leave everything behind. Your belongings, your family, your friends. Join the party of the Fair Folk, live forever with us."

Ralph thinks momentarily of Piggy, sad, and then carefully puts the blueberry in her mouth, chewing it slowly.

Jack catches Ralph in a kiss when she's swallowed and Ralph melts into it. "You ready to go to Faerie?"

"As I'll ever be." Ralph replies.

Jack takes her hand and pulls her into the sudden ocean on the path.

Ralph smiles.

fin.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed this. If you did, please feel free to leave a comment and/or kudos, and track me down on Tumblr @nose-coffee. Thanks!


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